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Problem Sleuth: Volume 2
The second volume of Problem Sleuth is divided into four chapters. Having successfully escaped from their offices, the members of Team Sleuth now find themselves drawn into the plight of the four kingdoms. They also gain awareness of their female alter egos, who must deal with their own set of puzzles and obstacles. Click the " " to open the page from Problem Sleuth. Second-level bullets represent branching paths; branching paths in italics result in dead ends. Chapter 6 |start = |end = |length = 62 pages |previous = Chapter 5: The Degenerate Gamblers |next = Chapter 7: Fit of Hysterics }} * Entering the speakeasy's double doors, Problem Sleuth and Pickle Inspector are greeted by the sight of two thugs guarding another, more ornate set of double doors. A panel to the left of the door possesses three skull-shaped notches. ** PS carves a skull face into a pumpkin, in reference to the solution to a similar puzzle in ''Jailbreak.'' ** As the thugs advance towards them, PI runs back into the poker room and grabs Ace Dick's imaginary skull. PS uses the Sleuth Diplomacy battle technique to gun down the thugs. PI returns and places AD's skull into one of the notches. * AD drops PI's skull through the skylight. Meanwhile, PS attempts to circumvent the puzzle entirely by summoning the Weasel King. He lacks the necessary Weasel Snot needed, though, and can only summon a Weasel Emissary instead. The Emissary is unsure whether he can trust PS, so PS opens his Allegiance Menu and must choose to align himself with either weasels or elves. ** PS holds down all shoulder buttons, Start and Select at the same time. The ''Problem Sleuth title screen appears and the adventure restarts from the beginning.'' ** PS aligns himself with the elves, and the horrified Emissary starts to Flip the Fuck Out. PS prepares to gun him down with the Mollify battle technique, but PI intervenes and manages to non-lethally calm down the Emissary by ogling him disconcertingly. * AD enters the elf elevator and flips its switch, causing it to ascend. PS changes his allegiance to weasels and the appeased Emissary asks if PS can spare a hero to help the weasels complete a mission. As the mission calls for someone with unusually high Height, PI is chosen and he leaves with the Emissary. * The elevator reaches its destination and AD enters a control room. He notices a large code machine, a map of the four kingdoms, and a control panel with a monitor bank showing surveillance footage of the detectives' offices. A hatch in the floor is locked and the only way to open it is by solving an incredibly elaborate puzzle device on the other side of the room. AD has no idea how to solve it. * PI arrives in a field of salted melons and sees two weasels trying to steal elf eggs from a nest in a nearby tree. Using his impressive Height, he takes the eggs and gives them to the weasels. Meanwhile, PS goes to the poker room and changes his allegiance back to elves. The elves recruit him to complete an important mission. For this quest, PS abandons all his inventory items by dropping through the skylight (except the tommy gun, which he puts on the floor, and his candy corn, which he leaves inside his hat), then enters the hatch beneath the poker table and starts to fall for a lengthy period of time. * AD goes to the rooftop and collects PS's save state code and flask of elf tears, grabs the window and portable generator from his office, and brings them all back to the control room. * PS lands in front of a cottage occupied by some clowns. One of them leaves a pie on the windowsill; the elves have tasked PS with taking the pie and bringing it to them. Because he doesn't have enough Mannercite Shards in his Etiquette Monstrance, PS can't politely ask the clowns for the pie, so he simply takes it and runs as the clowns pursue him. ** AD enters the window, but since he positioned it sideways he falls down and lands on the beast in the street. Suddenly, the store window turns back on, making the beast vanish and sending AD falling to his death. ** AD opens a compartment in the control panel and finds a parachute. The Weasel Emissary grants PI a boon for completing the mission and leads him to a spiderhole, where he is to begin a quest of spirit. PI climbs in the hole and starts falling for a lengthy period of time. * Still fleeing from the clowns, PS escapes by running through a portal created by the Elf Exemplar. The Exemplar takes the pie, grants PS a boon and the right to start his own quest of spirit, and leaves. PS is now inside a featureless room containing only a wardrobe. Investigating what looks like a magical portal inside the wardrobe, PS hits his head against it and falls unconscious. Meanwhile, in an apartment with a similar wardrobe, a woman lies on the floor in the same position as PS. Chapter 7 |start = |end = |length = 76 pages |previous = Chapter 6: More Weird Puzzle Shit |next = Chapter 8: The Sleazy Brothel in the Sky }} * The woman, Hysterical Dame, becomes a playable character. Trapped in her apartment, she tries to throw her teddy bear at the door, but it turns into a knife. Throwing a pillow at the door only results in increasing her Hysteria levels. While she has the business card of a private detective who may be able to help her, she cannot call him because her phone is missing several parts. Looking around, she spots a window overlooking an urban mural and a music box that she has lost the key to. * AD inputs the save state code into the code machine, loading a new version of reality. Through unknown means, HD has found the missing parts and reassembled her phone, but the detective isn't picking up her calls. Trying one last time, she dials the number again and the detective - PS - that he's too busy dealing with weird puzzle shit to help her right now, then hangs up. * In the new save state, the puzzle device in the control room has been solved, activating a button on the control panel. AD presses it, revealing the hatch to be on top of a vertical column that extends towards the ceiling, though there is not enough clearance for it to fully extend. PI finishes falling and lands in a room containing only a medicine cabinet. * HD picks up her teddy bear, which reduces her Hysteria, then causes it to max out as it becomes the knife. She starts to flip out. PI opens the cabinet and sees that it contains some pill bottles and a dimensional rift. ** AD stands on top of the hatch and presses the button. He is crushed to death when the column hits the ceiling. ** Thinking of a better idea, AD uses the bust stands to prop his window above the hatch, then pushes the button. The column expands through the window, allowing it to fully rise and reveal a doorway in its base. AD turns off the window, severing the extra length of column and bouncing it off the beast's head, and enters the doorway. After he leaves, the window turns upside down. * The knife turns back into the teddy bear and HD calms down, then notices that the bear has her music box key tied around its neck. She takes the key and opens the music box, through which she can see PS in his beast corpse armor. When the music stops, she puts the box down only to be confronted by the giant face of Mobster Kingpin looming outside her window, spiking her Hysteria levels. * PS awakens in a different room, this one featuring four busts representing each species of the Four Kingdoms. Each bust is positioned in front of a door. Because he received a boon from the elves, the elf bust starts flickering out of existence and he can pass through it. * PI hits his head on the medicine cabinet, falls on the floor, and consumes a large quantity of hallucinogenic pills from the bottles. The scene fades into the apartment of PI's female counterpart, Nervous Broad, who becomes a playable character. As she gets up, a tiny AD holding a skull scurries into a mouse hole. * After falling a great distance, AD deploys his parachute and lands in a muddy wallow full of hogs. He punches one in the snout to establish superiority, earning him the respect of the other hogs. Their leader, Porkhearst, asks him to steal some salted melons from the weasels. * NB picks up her lipstick, slightly elevating her Nerves level, and examines the miniature carousel on top of her full length mirror. The carousel requires a key to function. * PS enters the elf door and arrives in the control room. He checks the game scores of the Team Sleuth members on the control panel. NB tries to apply her lipstick, but something about the idea causes her to max her Nerves level, flip out, and drop the lipstick on the ground. * Having accepted the hogs' mission, AD collects salted melons and stuffs them in his parachute. A weasel observes the theft and flips the fuck out. AD cannot ask the weasel to stop due to a lack of Mannercite Shards in his Etiquette Monstrance, so he instead uses the Monstrance to club the weasel to death. * Acting on a hunch, PS examines a pig poster in AD's office and finds another save state code on the back. He takes it, and the window from his own office, back to the control room. Hoping to calm herself down, NB looks at her Fancy Santa collection. She calls the number on PI's business card, but she doesn't get a response, as PI does not own a phone. Mobster Kingpin's face looms outside her window and her Nerves level maxes out. PI arrives in the bust chamber. * Fleeing from the weasels, AD is guided to safety by Porkhearst, who brings him to a room containing only a buffet table. AD examines the table and finds magical energy inside a cabinet. * PS inputs the save state code from the pig poster. A new instance of AD is created just before he takes the parachute. Instead of taking it, he goes through the window and lands on the beast, but this time he jumps off and falls into HD's music box, taking PS's skull as he passes by it. Going into the music box shrinks him down to a tiny size. * The regular AD gorges himself on buffet food and passes out from overeating. The scene transitions to another apartment that should be home to AD's female counterpart, but AD is incapable of imagining a female alter ego for himself. Instead, the "female alter ego" is just an unchanged male duplicate of AD, referred to as "Li'l Ace Dick." Chapter 8 |start = |end = |length = 74 pages |previous = Chapter 7: Fit of Hysterics |next = Chapter 9: This is Complete Bullshit }} * As LAD wakes up and the small AD exits HD's apartment through a mouse hole, PS is oblivious to the changes made by loading the save state and assumes the code did nothing. ** PS pushes random buttons on the code machine, making it load a heavily glitched save state. ** PS puts on a parachute and jumps out the upside-down window. Instead of falling towards the street, he floats away from it. * PI enters the elf room and discovers it to be a lounge. There is a picture of a couch posted where a couch should be and three face-shaped indentations in the wall. As PS continues floating away into space, he tries to land at the sleazy brothel on Whore Island. Unfortunately, he overshoots the landing and waves goodbye to the whores as he passes by them. * Disturbed by the kind of reading material offered by the lounge, PI puts his face in the highest indent, causing a couch suitable for his body type to appear. The small AD gives NB's lipstick to HD, and she flips out while wielding its chainsaw alternate mode. She cuts her Fancy Santa in half, revealing a carousel key hidden inside. * LAD dons a Prussian Kuirassier Helmet/Blond Wig. PI builds a fort out of couch cushions and drinks the candy corn liquor. The powerful liquor gives him more Imagination than his body can contain, and as he enters the Realm of Imagination he feels that he could bend the entire realm to his will. The beast reappears in front of him. * PS finally lands inside the palace of the Weasel King, who recruits him for an important assignment. LAD looks out his window and notices that the urban mural is actually part of a photomosaic that forms a picture of Mobster Kingpin. It is revealed that the female alter egos live in a dollhouse in MK's office, and LAD watches someone leave the office through a portal. * Bursting with Imagination, PI uses Pickle Replicsimile to divide himself into eight beings, then telekinetically picks up the music box building and hurls it at the beast. During her flip-out, HD cuts her music box in two, causing the building to likewise split in half before it can injure the beast. * One of the PI duplicates allows the beast to swallow him so he can fight it from the inside, doing damage to its internal organs. A second ascends to godhood and becomes Godhead Pickle Inspector, who can only respond to the user command "Fondly regard creation." A third turns himself into an even larger monster and easily devours the beast. However, his unfathomable bloodlust causes him to turn against the other PIs. * Accepting the Weasel King's offer, PS is given the Tectrix of the Arbitor and led to a conference room, where he is to talk with representatives of all four species and negotiate an end to the war of the Four Kingdoms. The Hog Provost says that an unknown party has been helping the clowns slap hogs on the rump, leading to the violent escalation that resulted in the current conflict. PS opens his Allegiance Mesh in an effort to solve the plight. ** PS presses Ctrl+Alt+Delete on the Allegiance Mesh keyboard. His face changes into one rendered in the art style of the webcomic Ctrl+Alt+Del. ** A PI duplicate creates a Candy Mecha to fight MPI. LAD tries to call AD, but AD is with the Whore Island brothel and doesn't get his "female" alter ego's call. AD wakes up in the bust chamber and enters the hog room, which contains a punch card machine and dot matrix printer. * MPI kills three of the six remaining PI duplicates, but when the candy mecha opens fire the monster turns and flees. NB is given the carousel key by the small AD and uses it, activating the mirror's window properties and creating a portal through which MPI is able to enter NB's apartment, shrunken down to human size. Fortunately, LAD arrives and beats MPI to death with a 2 by 4. A shrunken-down candy mecha also enters the apartment while NB walks through and arrives giant-sized on the imaginary city streets. * AD and PI level up and LAD acquires the ferruginous horn dropped by the beast. AD uses the punch card machine to print a punch card, then punches it in on a nearby computer. The dot matrix printer prints out a 5 alarm hot sauce recipe requiring all three horns dropped by the beasts and a chipotle pepper. * HD cuts the door of her room open with the lipstick, which still functions as a cutting weapon even in its mundane form. PI leaves the imaginary plane but still possesses one last duplicate, allowing him to exist in the real world and imaginary world simultaneously. Mobster Kingpin, revealed to be the mysterious individual helping the clowns, enters the bust chamber and goes through the clown door. All four busts are permanently removed. Chapter 9 |start = |end = |length = 57 pages |previous = Chapter 8: The Sleazy Brothel in the Sky |next = Chapter 10: That Would Have Been So Badass }} * Having no idea how to solve the plight of the four kingdoms, PS goes to GameFAQs and reads Andrew Hussie's walkthrough of Problem Sleuth. He scrolls past an item list (which reveals that the chipotle pepper is under AD's hat) and the steps for escaping from the office, then tries to speed things up by searching for "diplomacy." Eventually, he finds a cheat code that will let him bypass the puzzle entirely and prints it out on the dot matrix printer. * LAD investigates the dollhouse pool and throws in the ferruginous horn. It falls through the bottom and pops out of a manhole on the imaginary street. AD goes out to the street, gets the horn, goes back to his office, gets the other two horns from PI's corpse, goes to the still room, puts the ingredients in the hot sauce still and starts making 5 alarm hot sauce. * HD and the small AD go through the mirror portal, making HD grow to giant size and AD grow to normal size. LAD activates the pool's jacuzzi setting, turning it into a window connected to a portal above the imaginary street. NB sticks her head through, attracting the attention of Mobster Kingpin. He goes to grab his brass knuckles, but they turn into the Megaton Key. * While PI grabs the cheat code from the printer, his imaginary duplicate uses Temporal Replicsimile to divide himself into two selves, one who travels to the future and one who travels to the past. The past PI enters the control room and solves the puzzle device for AD, then blows up. Godhead Pickle Inspector offers a character duplicate recap: there is just one PS, one real PI and one future imaginary PI who may reappear later on, and three ADs - the original, the one with the skull, and the "female" one. * PI inputs the cheat code and the game skips ahead to PS successfully drafting a treaty that ends the war of the Four Kingdoms. After reviewing his work in Adobe TreatyViewer, PS presents the final draft to the Weasel King, who ratifies it by royal decree. PS levels up and is given two items by the Weasel King. One is a chemistry set containing 100 of each battle technique ingredient; the other is a munitions bag containing thousands of ammo rounds for the three detectives' weapons. PS is then teleported back to the poker room. * The AD with PS's skull drops it through the skylight and PS uneasily grabs his own skull, along with PI's skull and the tommy gun. Mobster Kingpin tries to make a crude pass at NB, then beats her when she turns him down. HD voices her displeasure with MK's treatment of her roommate, and LAD prepares to fight MK as well. * PI enters the clown bust door and arrives in a room with a staircase, door, switch, and an open safe. MK's office is in the safe; HD and NB are fighting him but MK is impervious to physical attacks. PS brings the two skulls to the locked double doors and slots them in the proper notches, unlocking the doors. * Unable to wield the brass knuckles, MK uses the Running Numbers battle technique to randomly change his attributes. Luckily for him, it gives him maximum Vim, allowing him to put on the knuckles and knock out HD. The candy mecha fires into MK's mouth, elevating his Blood Sugar and making him slightly susceptible to physical attacks. Taking advantage of this, NB hits him for minor damage. * MK throws the dollhouse through the glass panel of his door. The candy mecha, thinking quickly, jumps through the pool portal and lands on the street with great impact. Several buildings are damaged by the impact, knocking PS's window onto the street and loosening PI's skylight. The dollhouse lands on top of the candy mecha. LAD jumps through the pool portal and engages MK in combat. * PS enters the double doors. They permanently lock behind him.